Joe DiMaggio Had The Biggest Bat In The League, According To Pete Rose

And so we end another day of sports news and highlights with this story from Pete Rose about a trip he took to Vietnam with Joe DiMaggio. According to Rose, Joltin’ Joe was quite the man, and he described exactly what he meant by such in a much more explicit, to-the-point manner during a recent interview.

Here is what Rose had to say about the Yankee clipper and his biologically inherited baseball bat:

“In 1967, I get a call from the state department and a guy identifies himself and he says, ‘Would you like to go to Vietnam?’ I said, ‘Not necessarily. In ’67?’ He said, ‘Well, Joe DiMaggio’s going.’ So five of us went over to Vietnam and we went to Saigon and met up on the Intrepid in Tonkin Bay. And we were there for 23 days. Now we’re down in the middle of the jungle, it’s hot, it’s so hot you can’t sleep, there’s a war going on, you can see the helicopter and every fourth bullet is a tracer. We’re up on a hill and there’s a valley and the other hill is where the war’s going on. And Joe says, ‘Man, I’ve gotta take a shower.’ I said, ‘Joe, we’re out in the middle of the jungle, what do you mean you’ve got to take a shower?’ He said, ‘I don’t give a damn, I’m Joe D and I’ve gotta take a shower.’ And the only way you can take a shower, Mike, is they have these big bamboo bags, like, and somebody’s got to get on a chair and pour the water and pull a rawhide thing and the water comes through and the guy takes a shower. So I saw everything that Marilyn Monroe saw. Now, when I tell people the best way to describe Joe DiMaggio, he was a penis with a man hanging from it. … Does that give you a better perspective?” [Sports Radio Interviews]